Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Drama “Monte Carlo”

“Monte Carlo” absolutely sparkles with a piano and groove-centric arrangement that sounds like the sort of opulent splendor suggested by the title. Drama, also true to their name, use this as the foundation for a song about romantic angst and hesitation, with Via Rosa singing wistfully about an on-again/off-again with someone everyone warned her about from the start. The song comes together to feel like an aspirational sort of melancholy, an entanglement that’s as fun and exciting as it is emotionally taxing. The song just lets you luxuriate in the sadness, never letting you forget how much of the pain is driven by pleasure.

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Piri & Tommy Villiers “Beachin”

“Beachin’” is extremely mellow at a high tempo, a dreamy moonlit ballad set to beats that sound like they’ve been yanked from a Roni Size record from the late 90s. Tommy Villiers’ production is rich with details but feels a lot more breezy than busy, judiciously doling out bass notes and never lets the vibey atmosphere of the lead guitar or keyboard washes thicken into a dense fog. Piri sings with very modern English R&B inflections – a lot of restraint and no showy runs, but with an elegant soulfulness in smaller moments. She fits perfectly in Villiers’ track, matching the tone for the most low-key parts while adding a boldness when the bass and breakbeats really hit.

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Black Country, New Road “Good Will Hunting”

It’s interesting how Isaac Wood’s vocals in Black Country, New Road songs sound both witholding and nakedly emotional, as though he’s doing his best to be aloof or stoic and he’s just constantly failing. We’re always catching him as the facade shatters, a shy person suddenly thrust into the spotlight of some movie scored by a bunch of people who wholeheartedly embrace the ornate melodrama of 2000s indie rock. “Good Will Hunting” turns a small moment of Wood imagining an idealized future for a relationship that clearly doesn’t have one into something gloriously bombastic in its sentiment. As the music raises the stakes Wood’s imagery gets more over the top and switches film genres entirely, tossing the sweet summers in France of the first verse for imagining the two of them on a burning starship, and an epic separation across the galaxy. And as huge and overblown as the song gets, it never quite loses the thread of this all just being a guy making a lot out of not much at all and basically just torturing himself.

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Spoon “Satellite”

“Satellite” is sung from the perspective of someone honoring boundaries set by someone they love but clearly doesn’t love them, and suffering quietly from a distance while insisting “I know I love you more.” Britt Daniel sings this chorus with the full awareness that his love is in vain but he doesn’t care – this isn’t about dignity, this isn’t about reality or possibilities, this is just about the truth as he feels it. It’s not a threat or even an oath to make good on his love, it’s holding on to something pure inside him for a little while longer before it eventually fades away.

This is a fairly old song dating back to around 2014, and one Spoon had seemingly abandoned in the space between They Want My Soul and Hot Thoughts. I’m not sure what the problem was – maybe it just took a while to find the right level of drama and pathos in the arrangement, or perhaps they sensed the song just didn’t fit on Hot Thoughts, or it could be that Daniel needed some space from this sentiment or moment in his life. It’s also possible that he just wasn’t comfortable with using the same “I’m your satellite” lyrical conceit in both this and “Inside Out,” though I like the way the implication feels totally different between the two songs. In “Inside Out,” it’s more about being caught in an attraction so strong he barely can resist it, and in this he’s just this person orbiting someone on the periphery of their life because he can’t let go.

It’s a similar shift in perspective that makes that chorus so different from Karen O singing “wait, they don’t love you like I love you” in “Maps” despite essentially saying the same thing. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs song comes from a place of vulnerability, she’s finding the courage to say something that scares her a little. “I know I love you more” is a statement of pride, it’s coming from a place of refusing to lose when it’s clear the game is over. Daniel makes the song sting by leaning into that pride, and letting you feel it as he dismantles his own romantic delusions.

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Kim Petras “Treat Me Like A Slut”

Kim Petras’ new mini-album Slut Pop sounds like the work of someone who has diligently studied The Teaches of Peaches and has now become a master of extremely horny pop in her own right. There’s obviously been no shortage of ultra-sexual music in the past decade but given her age and where she grew up I find it hard to imagine a lot of the cartoonishly vulgar dance pop I anthologized on my Motherfuckers & Fatherfuckers: Horny Hipsters 2000-2010 playlist were not major formative influences for her. She’s certainly tapping into that specific spirit on “Treat Me Like A Slut,” a silly-but-not-joking banger that’s like a fully ascended form of Avenue D.

Buy it from Kim Petras.

Cate Le Bon “Running Away”

Cate Le Bon often sings lyrics expressing exasperation and annoyance though her new record Pompeii but it’s always in this aloof and steady tone, like she’s always trying to keep up some sense of decorum. This vocal delivery and the cold geometric quality of her compositions suggests an even keel, but it’s really just an accurate depiction of adult emotions – dialed down, managed, nagging questions that get deferred indefinitely. The lyrics of “Running Away” move between declarations (“I’m sick of soft hearts”), clarifications (“I’m not cold by nature”), and lamentations (“You can’t put your arms around it, it’s not there anymore”), but as much as those lines leap out as provocative phrases, the emotional inertia implied by the music is expressed in a more conceptual line in the chorus: “Multi-directional love with nowhere left to go.”

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Animal Collective “Walker”

Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs is a great example of a band circling back to their greatest strengths as musicians/songwriters after a long period of exploration in various configurations, but if you’re paying attention they’ve added a lot of new tricks and ways of playing together. The most obvious changes is that Deakin has grown considerably as a keyboard player and Panda Bear has evolved as a drummer, leading both towards grooves that nod towards R&B grooves without straying from the distinctive feel of Animal Collective. “Walker” combines the boyish harmonies of their most widely beloved music with a strutting groove that’s just on the edge of full funk, all in the service of ambiguous yet clearly reassuring lyrics. The result is bright and joyful, particularly when they accent it all with melodic mallet percussion that adds a little extra sparkle to the mix.

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Saba “One Way”

Daoud & daedaePIVOT set up a delicate and subtle tension here, keeping the bass taut and the percussion in crisp, nervey pockets while leaving enough softness and space for the overall feel of the track to seem at least superfically relaxed. They make you feel every little shift under Saba’s voice – a bit of a tug as the tangle tightens, the relief as it loosens a bit, the weight that lifts when it drops almost entirely and feels like a miracle. Saba’s vocal is just as thoughtful and intuitive as the bass and percussion, sometimes gently dragging up against the music and in other moments gliding gracefully with it, conveying some warmth while maintaining a bit of aloof distance.

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Koma Saxo featuring Sofia Jernberg, Otis Sandsjö, Jonas Kullhammar, Mikko Innanen & Christian Lillinger “Koma Kaprifol”

Petter Eldh and his Koma Saxo ensemble approach jazz as though they’re just trying to organically get to where DJs and producers like DJ Shadow and Luke Vibert got with jazz through sampling and digital approximation by themselves 20-25 years ago. “Koma Kaprifol” has the compositional logic of a DJ track – the flute part is played like a loop over the beat, every other element seems to get layered in like a collage. The break sequence that leads to a shift in beat and a more wild bass part even sounds to me like the way Shadow would sometimes cut away from neat loops for a bit of carefully composed funky chaos. Eldh really gets the best of both worlds here, this balance of that meta compositional approach and the energy of musicians in a room actually deliberately playing the stuff rather than having it repurposed later on.

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Pom Poko “Enduro Corner”

Pom Poko songs tend to be very dynamic to the point that they can sometimes feel twitchy and impatient, as though the band is always eager to leap to another section from where they are in the moment. “Enduro Corner” has the big dynamic swings but a more mellow disposition as Ragnhild Fangel sings a gentle tangle of melody on the verses over guitar parts that seem to sway in a breeze. This is the tone that dominates most of the song, but it’s in some ways just an extended set up for the big dramatic moment in the chorus as the guitars feel like they’re suddenly dropping you off a cliff. The song eventually resolves into a more relaxed state, but only after a staccato part that somewhat disrupts the calm.

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Warpaint “Champion”

A lot of Warpaint’s music sounds very much like the work of a band that do their best in a room together, songs that come across like music that was born in jams and refined through steady work. “Champion,” from the group’s new record largely made by remote through the pandemic, makes the most of their physical separation by moving towards an arrangement that suggests distance and isolation in its cold tones and wide open negative space. But as icy as the keyboard tones are and as clicky as the drumming gets, there’s some warmth radiating through this song. The guitar part sounds like it’s a thousand miles away from the drums but in a way that makes it feel like a far off beacon, and the vocals send a message of support and love from across the apparent chasm. The song doesn’t actually come across as especially sad or lonely, more just meditative, kind, and hopeful in its longing.

Buy it from Warpaint.

Cola “Blank Curtain”

Cola somewhat resemble the sound of Interpol on “Blank Curtain,” but a version of Interpol in which all the members have been unknowingly hit with some kind of tranquilizer. Interpol would play this fast super tight, but Cola play it slow and slack. It feels a bit like the stage of insomnia where your body and mind are totally exhausted but you still can’t quite turn off, so everything seems to happen in a slow blur. Tim Darcy’s voice sounds drowsy and slurred but there’s an obvious core of empathy in his performance even without paying attention to the lyrics, in which he’s musing on someone else’s feeling of emptiness and loss. “I wish it could be easy on you, that I could reduce the cost,” he sings, conveying a genuine kindness but also just a profound sense of impotence in the face of everyday misery.

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Gabriella Cohen “I Just Got So High”

“I Just Got So High” feels like a song fully destined to licensing ubiquity, a breezy and instantly appealing and vaguely familiar sorta-neo-soul tune that clearly expresses a powerful romantic feeling but with just enough tension to make it interesting. You could build an entire Netflix rom-com around it, it’s just so easy to visualize this as a montage maybe two or three narrative beats after the meet-cute. Gabriella Cohen sings it all with a flirty charm that feels effortless but also has some stagey contrivance to it, this full commitment to a heightened reality where somehow the whole world is doing great because this one lady has a crush.

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Toro Y Moi featuring Salami Rose Joe Louis “Magazine”

“Magazine” falls into an intriguing middle ground between chill and queasy. Salami Rose Joe Louis’ vocal moves between a low mutter that reminds me a lot of Mica Levi on old Micachu and the Shapes songs and a high, breathy sung part that sounds like they’re in a sad daze. The beat is busy but it’s up against keyboard and bass parts that seem to just churn around in circles. There’s enough forward momentum to keep the music from feeling like it’s a holding pattern but Chaz Bear’s arrangement signals a lot of muted frustration. The lead guitar part near the end is very expressive without allowing for much catharsis, and the song ends by basically ducking outside itself and into another unrelated groove that “accidentally” gets warped and eaten up like bad tape.

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Fatlip & Blu “Gangsta Rap”

Madlib goes absolutely wild with the sampled surface noise on this track, foregrounding it to the point that it becomes a heavy ambient element so it sounds like Fatlip and Blu are rapping through a literal nostalgic haze. Both rappers take the cue to reminisce – Blu’s verse offers a wry perspective of growing up and finding some direction in rap, while Fatlip recalls friction in the music industry back in his Pharcyde days. There’s an interesting low-key tension in Fatlip’s performance here, like he’s holding back from going off and actively deciding to focus on what he’s happy about in his life. The whole song feels happy but a little bittersweet, the way looking back on the past can just dredge up old disappointments and even if they don’t mean much anymore it still can sting.

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Riches “Light of Dawn”

“Light of Dawn” is an expression of love so pure that it might seem naïve. Catherine McCandless sings this sweet, simple tune with total sincerity and seriousness – there’s no wink, there’s no doubt, just total belief in the power of the love she shares with the person addressed in the lyrics. The song is very folk in its structure and melody but the tones are mostly electronic, starting with the simple drum machine beat and moving along to layers of gently treated vocal harmonies. The tonality and atmosphere reminds me a lot of Massive Attack’s classic “Teardrop” but the mood is closer to The Bangle’s “Eternal Flame.” It’s a love so intense and achingingly sweet that it feels sad – maybe it’s a tears of joy thing, or maybe it’s the fear that nothing like this can actually last.

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Cat Power “Bad Religion”

Chan Marshall does a lot of things in her covers that I typically hate – she slows songs waaaay down, significantly alters melodies and chord progressions, emphasizes the lyrics over the music. But this all works for her because her approach isn’t a matter of just playing a song, it’s more about showing us how she’s heard a piece of music and connected with it. It’s as though she’s heard something that has moved her, scribbled down a lot of notes and lyrics that resonated with her, and then she made another piece of music based on that. Her version of Frank Ocean’s “Bad Religion” barely resembles his original, trading out his muted gospel for a cautious rhythm and guitar and piano tones that will sound familiar to anyone whose heard her ‘90s recordings. But you can really feel how she internalized his song, particularly the parts in which he’s spilling his guts to an anonymous cab driver because he feels like he’s under siege and he’s desperate to finally just say some things he can’t stop thinking about. Marshall zeroes in on the exhaustion at the core of the song and moves from there, connecting to her own terrible memories by way of Ocean’s exasperated vulnerability in the original recording.

Buy it from Amazon.

Guerilla Toss “Cannibal Capital”

The tonal palette of “Cannibal Capital” is bright and super saturated, a throwback to the sort of indie music that was a few steps removed from kid’s music that was ubiquitous through the 2000s. But Guerilla Toss aren’t particularly twee, just energetic and colorful – the rhythm is twitchy and the lyrics express a gnawing, overwhelming and near-constant angst. It’s become rather banal for musicians to sing about anxiety now but Kassie Carlson takes an interesting wide angle on the ideas here, imagining emotions as a delicate economy prone to surging highs and crashing lows brought on by external factors. The chorus and bridge parts aim for ecstatic catharsis but don’t quite achieve escape velocity, maybe in part because that’s the part of the song where she’s wondering if escape is even possible. This metaphorical economy is just the same as real literal ones – you can imagine something much better, but could you ever actually make it happen?

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The Smile “You Will Never Work In Television Again”

I love that Thom Yorke basically waited until people entirely topped asking for him to make straight-ahead rock music to get back to making straight-ahead rock music, and I also love that Jonny Greenwood, the other member of Radiohead anyone would have reasonably expected to be uninterested in making straight-ahead rock music is the one doing it with him. It’s a bit contrary in the way you’d expect them to be, but The Smile also just makes sense as a creative move. It’s not surprising to me that Thom Yorke would want to move away from the more electronic and rhythmically dense music he’s made on his own for a very long time now. It is totally logical to me that Jonny Greenwood, a guy with an aptitude to write and play just about anything would gravitate to the opportunity to focus on bass guitar, the instrument he hasn’t had much opportunity to explore since that’s his brother’s role in Radiohead. And it makes sense that they’d play this with a drummer like Tom Skinner, who plays with more blunt physicality than Radiohead’s Phil Selway.

It’s not hard to imagine “You Will Never Work In Television Again” as a Radiohead song, but to transfer it to that template would likely mean adding some extra layers of sound that would diminish the rough simplicity of the arrangement. You could make the song more dense and louder, but the point is made well enough by Yorke’s frantic guitar and Skinner’s bashed out percussion, with Greenwood lurking behind the din adding subtle contours to the music. Yorke’s vocal lags just behind the beat like he’s chasing the song down and yelling at it as it accelerates away from him. There’s some resemblance to “Bodysnatchers” from In Rainbows and the Bends era b-side “Permanent Midnight,” but for the most part this is a different kind of rock song for Yorke and Greenwood, something that’s more primitive than what they’ve previously attempted but informed by the nuance and complexity of the music they’ve made together and apart over the years.

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Max Changmin “Airplane Mode”

“Airplane Mode” opens in medias res on a verse, the atmosphere around the gently rolling bass line already so thick that it feels like unexpectedly walking into a room full of dry ice fog and dramatic lighting. The particular guitar tones and the starkness of the arrangement remind me a lot of the xx, but with a more overtly pop density of composition – imagine if Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft ditched Jamie xx for Max Martin while still aiming for their familiar hyper-romantic vibe. Max Changmin, a veteran of the K-pop duo TVXQ, sings with light R&B inflections like Justin Timberlake at his most wistful and brings a perfectly calibrated level of cinematic romance to the song. It’s not so much to be overly syrupy, but just enough to feel like a more restrained and tasteful choice to fit into a moment in a rom-com depicting a pained yearning for something that might be lost forever.

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Blood Red Shoes “Morbid Fascination”

It’s entirely possible that Laura-May Carter’s lyrics in “Morbid Fascination” are coming from a fully autobiographical place, but the scenario strikes me as more of a dark fantasy – finding a recent ex in a bar, sitting beside them in disguise, and hearing them describe you in a very unflattering light from their perspective. There’s a lot of places you can go from this point emotionally, but the industrial glam arrangement – think Garbage, or Goldfrapp, or certain mid-90s PJ Harvey songs – feels bold and brutal, like an armor protecting Carter from the emotional impact. She feels betrayed and angry and wonders if she actually can’t see herself clearly, but mostly the vibe here is “actually, it’s funny.” And part of that is hearing herself portrayed as “someone else,” and part of that is laughing at her own capacity for masochism.

Buy it from Bandcamp.